What sorts of attitudes and behaviors does it take to move up the ladder in your organization?

If you work for a large company, chances are upward momentum favors steady qualities like compliance, caution, and consensus over speedy traits like imagination, initiative, and improvisation. That’s the nature of the beast. Big business is designed to move forward according to plan, at a measured and deliberate pace.

Back when the attention and obedience of consumers could be bought with media advertising, this worked reasonably well. Big business was able to set the pace.

Today, though, with only limited guidance from mass media, consumers set the pace. Left to their own devices, they imagine all sorts of things. They take unpredictable initiatives. They improvise all over the map at high speed.

Having for generations selectively bred such rash traits out of the corporate DNA, it now takes a huge and deliberate effort for big business to adopt a real-time, customer-driven mind set. Most large companies can’t even get their heads around the idea.

Business as Usual…let’s look at what’s expected in the corporate world:

- Wait, to make certain.

- Work from checklists dictated by one-year and even five-year business plans

- Measure results quarterly

- Execute based on a long-term “new product launch” mentality

- Get permission from your superior

- Run decisions by your staff

- Bring in the experts, the agencies, and the lawyers

- Conduct extensive research

- Carefully evaluate all the alternatives

- Aim for perfection before public release

- Respond to customers on your time frame

- Engage with media, analysts, and commentators only when convenient and comfortable for you.

None of this is inherently wrong. Clearly, research, planning, and team-work are essential. *The problem is that speed and agility are too often sacrificed for the sake of “process”. To overcome that you need to consciously and proactively adopt a real-time mind-set. *

The real-time mind-set recognizes the importance of speed. It is an attitude to business (and to life) that emphasizes moving quickly when the time is right.
Developing a real-time mind-set is not an either/or proposition. We are not recommending you to abandon your current business-planning process. Nor should you be advocate allowing your team to run off barking at every car that drives by. Focus and collaboration are essential.

The smart answer is to adopt a both/and approach, converting the spectrum from thorough to nimble. Recognize when you need to throw the playbook aside, and develop the capacity to react quickly.

An immensely powerful competitive advantage flows to organizations with people who understand the power of real-time information.

Developing that capacity requires sustained effort: encouraging people to take initiative; celebrating their success when they go out on a real-time limb; cutting them slack when they try and fail. None of this is easy.

No More Business Usual…here are some tips on how to develop Real-Time Business

- Act before the window of opportunity vanishes

- Revise plans as the market changes

- Measure results today

- Execute based on what’s happening now.

- Implement strategies and tactics based on breaking news

- Empower your people to act

- Move when the time is right

- Encourage people make wise decisions quickly, alone if necessary

- Make swift inquiries, but be prepared to act

- Quickly evaluate the alternatives and choose a course of action

- Get it done and push it out, because it will never be perfect

- Respond to customers on their time frames

- Engage with media at the moment they need your input

Watch a video interview with David Meerman Scott here
The Real-Time Mind-Set

David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people’s eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, New Rules, now in its second edition, is a modern business classic.
His newest book Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now was released in November 2010. It achieved #2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and #3 on the USA Todaybestseller list.
These books are available for sale online via our business education partner – The Growth Faculty website.

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